Firefly forced to postpone next launch because of security issues
Capitalism in space: Firefly has been forced to postpone its next launch of its Alpha rocket, tentative scheduled for late January, because the federal government wants the Ukranian investor — who essentially saved the company when it went bankrupt — to completely divest himself of any ownership.
Noosphere Venture Partners, a fund run by Ukrainian-born investor Max Polyakov, said Dec. 29 that it will retain an investment banking firm to sell its interest in Firefly. That sale comes at the request of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the company said.
Polyakov invested $200 million to bring the company from the ashes when it was about to be liquidated in bankruptcy proceedings. He left its board of directors last year and reduced his share in the company last year in an effort to ease these same concerns. Apparently that wasn’t good enough, even though his ownership was not a problem when the company obtained a lease for a launch site at Vandenberg Space Force Base.
Though there might be a real security issue, we must not dismiss the possibility that this is a corrupt power play by people in Washington to use Polyakov’s foreign roots to push him out so that they can replace him, now that the company is healthy and moving forward after Polyakov saved it.
I know this is a cynical suspicion, but based on the behavior of our Washington bureaucracy and legislators in the past decade, it is far from an unreasonable one.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Capitalism in space: Firefly has been forced to postpone its next launch of its Alpha rocket, tentative scheduled for late January, because the federal government wants the Ukranian investor — who essentially saved the company when it went bankrupt — to completely divest himself of any ownership.
Noosphere Venture Partners, a fund run by Ukrainian-born investor Max Polyakov, said Dec. 29 that it will retain an investment banking firm to sell its interest in Firefly. That sale comes at the request of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the company said.
Polyakov invested $200 million to bring the company from the ashes when it was about to be liquidated in bankruptcy proceedings. He left its board of directors last year and reduced his share in the company last year in an effort to ease these same concerns. Apparently that wasn’t good enough, even though his ownership was not a problem when the company obtained a lease for a launch site at Vandenberg Space Force Base.
Though there might be a real security issue, we must not dismiss the possibility that this is a corrupt power play by people in Washington to use Polyakov’s foreign roots to push him out so that they can replace him, now that the company is healthy and moving forward after Polyakov saved it.
I know this is a cynical suspicion, but based on the behavior of our Washington bureaucracy and legislators in the past decade, it is far from an unreasonable one.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
It sucks having these changes occur with no real understanding of the problem. I have payload launching the rocket and now it is delayed. All it does is hurt my business in the long run.
Joe:
Curious if you have an ‘opt-out’ clause if there are unforeseen delays, or are you locked into the contract, regardless?
Probably a long shot, but could this be a small piece of distancing ourselves from Ukraine, leaving them twisting in the wind in front of Putin?
Jester Naybor:
Maybe. However, I think America has no business in Ukraine either way.
Regardless, the “space transportation business” really seems to me to be one of the hardest ways to make a profit. High risks at all fronts.
High risks at all fronts.
Questioner, that is true … as it has been since the first watercraft left sight of the shore. To the point that in many cases it took the plausible promise of great wealth at the destination, to motivate the design and use of such transport … Columbus and others sought access to the known wealth of the East, for example. Would the American transcontinental railroad been built if it had not been established that California also possessed such wealth?
That being said, it is particularly interesting that men – from the Wrights to Musk – have sought to leave contact with terra firma when the return-on-investment for doing so is far less certain.
The Big Guy didn’t get his ten percent?
If foreign ownership is a problem, what of SpaceX (Musk dual citizenship) and Rocket Lab (Beck)? Or is it just ties to certain countries that are forbidden? Then what of the Biden’s ties to the Ukraine?